Tarot and Playing Cards in Witchcraft

“I heard a distemperate dicer solemnly sweare that he faithfully beleeved, that dice were first made of the bones of a witch, and the cards of her skin, in which there hath ever sithence remained an enchantment that whosoever once taketh delight in either, he shall never have power utterly to leave them.”
—George Whetstone, The Enemie to Unthriftinesse, 1586.

In a 1519 Milanese edition of a 14th century Spanish romance poem called La Spagna Istoriata, the hero Roland tries to discover the enemies of Charlemagne via magic by making a circle and casting or “throwing” the cards (fece un cerchio e poscia gittò le carte). Ross Caldwell tracked down the evidence and discovered that this phrase appears in only that one edition. All others say: fece un gran cerchio e poi gettava l’arte (“he made a big circle and then cast the art”). Upon comparing several versions Ross came to the conclusion that Roland is using a grimoire. He has a book in hand, he makes the circle, “throws the art,” and in the next verse he starts reading (leggendo il libro). Whereupon thousands of demons, big and small, enter the circle. Ross thinks that the best reading for “gettava” is “threw OPEN” the book (of art), and that the 1519 reference to le carte probably signifies throwing open the “pages” of the grimoire. I mention this possibility here since the reference appears in several books as evidence of an early use of playing cards in magic, which may not be the case. However, in the 17th century painting below we do see playing cards being used in a magic circle—so it is not completely beyond the range of possibility.

Ruth Martin in Witchcraft and the Inquisition in Venice, 1550-1650 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989) tells of one Isabella Bellochio who in January of 1589 was “found guilty of being apostate from God.” It seems she so desperately wanted a faithless lover to return to her that she called on the Devil for assistance. Her housemaid testified that Isabella had burned a candle continuously in the kitchen “in front of a devil and the tarots.” Later the same year in another trial, a witch named Angela was accused of telling a client “‘you need to adore the devil if you want to get help,’ and she suggested getting hold of a tarot card.”

Marisa Milani, professor of the literature of folklore at the University of Padua, who did the original research in the Venetian Sant-Uffizio archive, claims this was a regular part of Venetian “martelli” (love magic): “One such ritual made use of the tarot cards, especially the one that portrayed the devil, which they would place next to a light until a certain time of day when prayers were addressed to it and formulas were recited.” Quoted in Margaret F. Rosenthal in The Honest Courtesan: Veronica Franco, Citizen and Writer in Sixteenth Century Venice (U of Chicago Press, 1992). Marisa Milani, wrote about these practices in Antiche Pratiche di medicina popolare nei processi del S. Uffizio (Venezia, 1527-1591) (Padova, 1986).

In 1622 Pierre de l’Ancre published in L’incredulité et mescréance du sortilege plainement convaincue (Paris) that one Jean Jordain made a pact with the Devil that was sealed by two playing cards: the 2 and 4 of Hearts. We are told that the Devil chose the two of hearts “to mark that he would not have two hearts to serve two masters.” The Two of Hearts was later destroyed, rendering the pact null and void. Del’Ancre defined cartomancy as “a type of divination certain people practice who take the images and place them in the presence of certain demons or spirits, which they have summoned, so that those images will instruct them on the things that they want to know.” (Thanks to Ross Caldwell for additional details.)

But the evidence is not just from court room records in Venice. Two 17th century works of art attest to the use of playing cards in witchcraft. “Depart pour le Sabat” by David Teniers the Younger (1610-1690) shows playing cards as part of a magical circle (see picture at top and to the right.)

Slightly more ambiguous is the 1626 engraving by Jan van de Velde in which a sorceress conjures demons while playing cards lay at her feet.

An accompanying text reads: “What evils Desire commands, in the small secluded place; who, by sweet incantation, overcomes the minds of the purest mortals, induces frenzy in everyone! But how quickly it slips by; Death overtakes brief life, brief delights. Laughing for a moment, in eternity suffering regret.” (Translation by Ross Caldwell.)

It should be noted that Isabella Bellochio was a staunch Christian who, in calling on the Devil to obtain her desires was merely “giving the Devil his due”—she knew she was doing something wrong in trying to coerce another to fulfill her own desires and so recognized this as the Devil’s work in his role as the lord of base, material desires. As Guido Ruggiero explained inBinding Passions: Tales of Magic, Marriage and Power at the End of the Renaissance (Oxford University Press, 1993), it did not signify for Isabella that she rejected Christ for the Devil. “I never understood”, she claimed, “that one had to pray to or honor the Devil but only that one must light a lamp to him in order to have that which one desired, that is in this case my lover. Thus I did not light it with the intention of worshiping or praying to him, but with the intention that my lover be made to come.” In a sense it was an honest acknowledgement that, in the context of Christianity, whenever you try to achieve your own desires at the expense of another you are doing the Devil’s work.

See also this report by Ross Caldwell on Spanish cartomancy and witchcraft from at least the 16th century – here.

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Mary K. Greer has made tarot her life work. Check here for reports of goings-on in the world of tarot and cartomancy, articles on the history and practice of tarot, and materials on other cartomancy decks. Sorry, I no longer write reviews. Contact me HERE.

It should be said that not all non-gaming uses of Tarot cards qualify as divination. There is for example, the use of Tarot cards in poetry called “Tarocchi Appropriati” Dummett has noted such uses. The controversy concerns whether the alleged witches use of the Devil XV qualifies as a genuine Tarot divination practice. Did they simply use this card because they needed an image of the Devil and it happened to be convenient? I don’t think this usage though indicates that people prior to the 18th century thought of the Tarot as anything more than a gaming device.

Jim – Yes. I haven’t gotten to “tarocchi appropriati” yet in my posts. Dummett doesn’t see any relation to divination in these, since they are character sketches done as a kind of poetry parlour game. The fact that this is a significant part of modern divination doesn’t seem to count.

The use of the Devil card in magical rituals is not divination, but it shows that the tarot had magical uses based on common analogies to the cards (that is, recognized card meanings) – as were regular playing cards as seen in Teniers’ painting. Many of us theorize that someone would have realized these yummy pictures could be used for fortune-telling, since people clearly used almost every other object you can imagine. We just keep gathering the evidence as it turns up.

There are plenty of bits of evidence that people related to the tarot as other than just a gaming device. For instance, it might have been seen as a map or encyclopedia of Renaissance cosmology and a philosophical or educational device. I’ll be gathering this information at some point, but for the time being you can explore http://www.trionfi.com where much of this evidence can be found.

Melanie – Yes. There are snippets of earlier references – one-liners where cards are mentioned among other techniques used for divination or lots. The eminent tarot historian, Sir Michael Dummett wrote that Tarot had not been used for anything except for playing games prior to the 18th century. To determine whether that is true or not those of us on the tarot history forums have been gathering every reference to any kind of card divination. They really aren’t separate. You will find in old Italian and French divination traditions that the Major Arcana and the Minor Arcana (identical to playing cards except for an extra court card) are often used separately: the Major Arcana for affairs of the spirit and the Minor Arcana for mundane issues. Only for major issues, according to this way of thinking, are they used together.

I guess you could say that the challenge has been whether Tarot and playing cards were used for anything other then gaming from an early point in their development, and more specifically, when were they first used for occult purposes—since modern Tarot is often called “the occult Tarot” to differentiate it from earlier cards supposedly used only for games.